Franchises: Halloween. Halloween (1978)

I've often talked about how significant October of 1998 was for me personally, as it was when I saw many of the classic Universal horror films for the first time and, as a result, for I could now truly call myself a fan of the genre. No less significant, however, was the following October, when I was twelve years old, and specifically, that Halloween weekend. I've always considered that to be when I took my first step in becoming a well-rounded fan, one who enjoyed stuff from the 70's onward, rather than just movies from the 30's to the 60's, which was just about all I ever watched beforehand. That Saturday was the night where I faced a life-long cinematic fear of mine: Chucky. I ended up watching Child's Play and Child's Play 3 on USA (I don't know why they didn't play the second one, but TNT had it on the following night) and, not only did they not scare me, but I actually enjoyed them. Little did I know that an even more major step would come the very next day, on Halloween itself. That was when I was introduced to both my personal favorite slasher franchise and a character who would become one of my favorite movie monsters. I'd known that there was a movie series called Halloween since I was fairly young, as I saw a clip of this original on a TV program that listed some good movies to watch in October. However, the title was all I took from it, as the actual clip didn't make much of an impression on me because I was so young, and I don't remember paying much attention, anyway. Since I always associated Halloween with ghosts, I figured it was possibly about that. I also saw some of the movies' VHS boxes at our town's video rental store, but I didn't pay them much mind either. In any case, throughout much of my life, we had a tradition of going over to my grandmother's house for lunch on Sundays, and that particular Halloween was no different. When we got over there, several of my cousins were huddled around the TV in the living room. I glanced in there but really didn't get much of anything from what I saw, which was a close-up of some bald guy with a goatee talking, and I just shrugged and walked off. When I passed by the room again, I saw the promo, "Halloween will continue in a moment," and I thought, "Oh, that's Halloween." Again, I didn't think much about it, and then, after several more peeks, my cousins left the living room and never came back. Now that the TV was free, I went in and was about to turn the channel, but then decided, "Well, I might as well watch this. I don't think there's anything else on." That was a very fateful decision, as I became glued to the seat, watching a man wearing a really freaky mask stalk and murder some people. I missed Annie's murder, but I saw the moment before that, where Tommy Doyle sees "the Boogeyman" standing in the shadows across the street, during one of the instances I peeked in. But after the moment where Tommy sees Michael Myers walking around to the front of the house, carrying Annie's dead body, I was there for the rest and, good God, was it a terrifying sit! The last fifteen minutes had me freaked out of my mind and the ending, where Michael disappears into the night after being shot a bunch of times, filled me with a sense of absolute dread, as I thought, "Oh crap, he's still out there somewhere!"

That scattered first viewing, as well as a slightly more coherent one of Halloween II immediately afterward, got me hooked to the point where I wanted to know everything I could about these movies. I wanted to see all of them (upon looking at the movies that were mentioned in our satellite programming guide for that month, I learned there were quite a few), to know who made them, and, most importantly of all, to know who this scary as hell villain was. I saw so little of the first movie and just so much of the second that I had no idea if this guy was meant to be a living human, undead, or if he was even human at all. It wasn't even until after I watched both that I learned his name was Michael Myers, as all I'd heard everyone refer to him as was the Boogeyman. All of this led me to use our newly purchased computer and internet connection to visit many websites dedicated to the franchise (much to the dismay of my mother who, at the time, didn't like the idea of me watching these movies at all). There, I learned about Michael, Laurie Strode, Dr. Loomis, Haddonfield, etc., as well as both John Carpenter and Donald Pleasence, both of whom have since become more important to me than I could've imagined at the time. I was now more than ready to own these movies, even though I had only seen the first two at the time; two years later, I got the original, as well as H20, on VHS as a birthday present from my aunt (despite my mother going behind my back and keeping my aunt from getting me said videotapes for Christmas the previous year). You cannot imagine how excited I was to not only see the original again for the first time since that initial viewing but to now actually see it from beginning to end.

After watching the VHS that Monday, it solidified my love for both the entire franchise and especially this original. I was surprised by how bloodless it was since, up to that point, the only one I'd seen multiple times was Halloween II which, even when it aired on TV, was quite bloody, and also because I'd heard others say the original was quite graphic (then again, those people probably never watched it and just assumed it was gory based on so many other slasher movies). But instead of being disappointed, I felt the lack of blood made it feel like a Hitchcock movie and gave it a touch of class. By that point, I'd also learned what a seminal film in the horror genre it was considered to be, having kick-started the slasher craze and seen as a classic even by typically uptight mainstream movie critics, as it was featured on AFI's 100 Years, 100 Thrills, which I saw right before I got that VHS. Speaking of which, an even bigger treat was that the VHS had some trailers, TV and radio spots, and a small making of featurette after the movie. By that point, I'd started to really enjoy these type of "behind the scenes" looks at movies, after having seen the documentary on Jaws that was included as part of the two-tape set of that film I'd gotten for Christmas the previous year, and this Halloween: Unmasked featurette was very, very interesting to me. It was one of the first times I got to hear Carpenter speak, and I also got to hear the thoughts of others like Debra Hill, Jamie Lee Curtis, PJ Soles, Irwin Yablans, Dean Cundey, Nick Castle, and Moustapha Akkad. It was interesting to hear some of the stories about the production, like how they turned a William Shatner mask into the terrifying face of Michael Myers, how Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee turned down the part of Dr. Loomis, and other stuff that's common knowledge to fans. In short, Halloween will always hold a special place in my heart for many reasons and, to this day, I agree with the general consensus that it's a bonafide classic. If you've checked out my 101 Favorite Horror Films list that I did years ago, you know just how highly I think of this movie, as I placed it in the top ten (that won't change whenever I get around to updating that list). I've seen it countless times, I could act it out and quote it verbatim (in fact, I think I have done that), and simply think it's one of the best.

While the movie that we all know and love is definitely John Carpenter's creation, we should also give some credit to Irwin Yablans and Moustapha Akkad, as they were the ones who ensured it was made in the first place and that it would become a franchise (for better or worse, depending upon your viewpoint). That's especially true of Yablans. Having been a distributor on Carpenter's Assault on Precinct 13, he saw what a talent he was and was anxious to work with him. Wanting something

profitable for his newly founded, independent production company, Compass International, he came up with the core idea of a murderer stalking babysitters, brought it to Carpenter and Debra Hill, and gave them free reign to develop it as they saw fit. It's also been said that Yablans was the one who came up with the idea of setting the film on Halloween and titling it that, even though Bob Clark had told Carpenter that was his idea for a tentative sequel to Black Christmas several years earlier (Yablans also claimed in later years that, contrary to popular belief, the original title wasn't The Babysitter Murders). Together, Yablans and Akkad put up the money, and Yablans also suggested they go for Donald Pleasence as Dr. Loomis. While his and Akkad's relationship with Carpenter would sour over the following years, and I have to admit that Yablans does come across like a dick in interviews and from other stories I've heard about him, there's still no denying that Halloween wouldn't have existed without him and Akkad.

I can't believe it took me this long to talk about John Carpenter, as he's not only my favorite of the "masters of horror" from the 70's and 80's but one of my favorite filmmakers period (I seriously need to review his filmography some time). Although many do know his name and he has a good number of fans, with Halloween remaining iconic even to this day, I still feel that Carpenter is underrated and has never quite been recognized as one of modern cinema's finest storytellers. Case in point, he took the simple concept of a killer stalking babysitters and, instead of making a sleazy exploitation movie, which it could've easily been, instead made a classy, well-constructed, suspenseful flick that his movie-making idol Howard Hawks and Alfred Hitchcock himself would've been proud of (since Hitchcock was still alive at this point, I've often wondered if he ever saw Halloween). The fact that he was able to do this in just under a month, on a very low budget, is an even bigger testament to his abilities. Hell, you need only look at any one of the majority of his movies, particularly those in the 70's and 80's, to know what a great filmmaker he is. That's ultimately why I think it's more than a little sad that none of his other movies ever measured up to Halloween in terms of mainstream success and recognition. As great of a film as it is, so much of Carpenter's filmography is just as good or, in some cases, even better (The Thing especially), and it's a shame that Halloween will, most likely, always overshadow it all. I don't think Carpenter himself is too happy about it, seeing as how he's said it was a job for hire and he wanted no part in any sequels, whereas he did do a sequel to Escape from New York and tried to do one for The Thing, which fell through. I get the vibe that, as grateful as he may be for the opportunities it gave him, and as much pride about it as he may have, he also has some mixed feelings, given how it did pigeonhole him as a horror director, for the most part.

I've always found the story of the movie's production to be a very charming one, in how it was a bunch of kids, mostly, coming together to make a movie, and that with only a budget of $300,000 and twenty shooting days, everybody had to help out with the really hard work, even if they were among the cast. I love hearing stories about how they had to pick up all the fake dead leaves between takes, that Michael Myers' mask was a William Shatner mask they bought cheap and then heavily altered, that Nick Castle ended up playing Michael because he happened to be visiting the set and Carpenter talked his old film school friend into it, that Carpenter did the music himself because he was quick and cheap, and so on. It really makes you appreciate that the movie came out as good as it did.

In her debut film role, Jamie Lee Curtis plays our young lead, Laurie Strode, as a very likable young woman, coming off as a sweet, caring, and overall average girl-next-door, one who takes both her schoolwork and babysitting responsibilities very seriously. In her interactions with Tommy Doyle, it's clear that it's more than just a part-time job for her, and the two of them are quite close. While they're walking to school, Tommy is clearly excited about her staying with him that night, which tells us she's done so many times before and that he likes her, and while there are moments where his hyperactivity does kind of get on her nerves, she's willing to do whatever he wants to make him happy. Even though she doesn't really believe him when he keeps talking about the Boogeyman coming after him, as she never sees Michael Myers when he gets her to look outside, Laurie does let him know that he's perfectly safe while she's around. That really comes into play during the climax, where she puts Tommy and Lindsey's safety before hers, telling them to get upstairs and lock themselves in the bedroom, and later in another room, while she deals with Michael. Said bravery is also the culmination of a character arc, as throughout the film, she's also been depicted as rather shy and reserved, in comparison to her two best friends. She's much more responsible than either of them, being aggravated when she realizes she forgot one of her textbooks, while Lynda flippantly says she always forgets her books, and agrees to take care of Lindsey Wallace for Annie, who drops her off on her so she can go have a rendezvous with her boyfriend. Speaking of which, Laurie is especially insecure when it comes to dating, with Annie teasing her about how she's never had a boyfriend, and even calling up the guy she admits she has a crush on, much to Laurie's humiliation. But in the end, as terrified as she is when she finds her friends murdered and is confronted with Michael, she really steps up to the plate to protect her charges.

The build-up to her eventual confrontation with Michael is done very gradually and effectively. She sees him several times throughout the day, watching her across the street from her classroom window, driving by her and her friends, watching from behind a hedge while she and Annie are walking home, and, which would really scare me personally, in the yard next to her house. She's more and more freaked out each time, and it doesn't help that, after she sees him outside her

bedroom window, Annie scares her by calling her and then not saying anything because she's chewing on something. Since nothing else happens for quite a while, Laurie manages to put it all out of mind (though, after all that, you'd think she'd pay a little more attention to Tommy's claims about the Boogeyman). But when she gets a call from Lynda, telling her that Annie hasn't come back from picking up her boyfriend, Laurie starts to become noticeably concerned, since Annie had left quite a

while ago. While she tells Lynda that the two of them probably stopped off somewhere, she can't help but pensively look out the window at the dark Wallace house. She definitely knows something isn't right when she gets another strange phone call later and hears Lynda, whom she thinks is Annie, gasping and squealing. At first, she naturally thinks "Annie" is just messing with her again, but when she doesn't get an answer both during that call and when she tries to call back, that prompts her to walk over to the house to see what's going on. She

still thinks it's possible her friends are playing a prank, but soon learns it's no laughing matter when she finds their dead bodies and is attacked by Michael. Fortunately, as I've said, despite being scared out of her wits, Laurie isn't just a screaming damsel in distress during this last act. She fights back against Michael using anything she can find, be it a knitting needle, a coat hanger, or even his own butcher knife whenever he drops it (if only she would stop throwing the damn thing away), all despite having been injured from getting grazed

along the arm by the knife and the fall she takes over the railing. By the end of the movie, Laurie realizes what she's been fighting is more than just a simple maniac, now believing Tommy's claims about the Boogeyman. She even asks Dr. Loomis after he saves her, "It was the Boogeyman?", to which he answers, "As a matter of fact, it was." And though she doesn't know of Loomis' discovery that Michael's body has vanished into the night after he shot him, Laurie starts crying, both in grief for her friends and likely out of terror, remembering Tommy's statement, "You can't kill the Boogeyman." 

Laurie's friend Annie Brackett (Nancy Loomis, whom I had the pleasure of meeting in Lexington, Kentucky) can best be described as sarcastic, cynical, and downright bitchy. In fact, despite me calling her Laurie's friend, she spends much of her screentime ragging on her, especially about the lack of romance in her life, telling her at one point that she, "Scared another one away," and also teasing her about being spooked by Michael. That said, there is a feeling that Annie genuinely wants her to lighten up and ask someone out, leading her to call up Ben Tramer, whom Laurie admits she has a crush on. While part of it is likely just some more teasing, she does tell Laurie, "Look, it's very simple: you like him, he likes you, all you need is a little push," and when she gets some resistance, she says, "Well, it won't hurt for you to go out with him, for God's sake!" Otherwise, she really is little more than a snarky smartass, and not just towards Laurie. When Michael drives past them while they're walking home, Annie, thinking it's someone they know, yells, "Hey jerk, speed kills!" Michael then slams on the brakes and sits there for a few seconds, to which she remarks, "God, can't he take a joke?" After he drives off, Laurie tells her that she's going to get them in trouble one day, hinting that she's done stuff like that before; Annie just snarks, "I hate a guy with a car and no sense of humor." (Personally, I've always liked to think that moment is why she dies first.) And unlike Laurie, she couldn't care less about her babysitting responsibilities. She obviously just does it for the money, and while she's not mean to Lindsey Wallace (although she does brag about having her watch a horror movie marathon that night, saying she, "Won't know what hit her,"), she's clearly not as close to her as Laurie is with Tommy. She's more than willing to dump Lindsey onto Laurie in order to be with her boyfriend, Paul, which ultimately leads to her death.

Lynda (PJ Soles, whom I've also met and is a real sweetheart), is definitely the bubbliest and most extroverted of Laurie's inner-circle. Some may describe her as an airhead but I'd say she's simply just more energetic and fun-loving than Laurie and Annie, especially since she's a cheerleader. She's also more than a little quirky. Besides her constant catchphrase of, "Totally!", she can really ramble, such as when she's telling Laurie everything she has to do the next day and when she's going on 

and on about how she always forgets her textbooks, saying, "It doesn't really matter if you have your books or not." Some may find that annoying but I've always just thought she was funny and rather cute, too. But I think we can all agree that Lynda is definitely the horniest of the three, conspiring with Annie to get some intimate time with her equally hormonal boyfriend, Bob (John Michael Graham), in the Wallaces' bedroom while they're out. They're both more than happy when they learn that Lindsey is over at the Doyle house, meaning they can go at it, and once they finish having sex, Lynda moans, "Oh, fantastic... totally." Speaking of Bob, he's memorable for some rather awkward lines, like when he jokes about ripping Lindsey's clothes off, along with their own (even though he was drunk, that's still cringey, to say the least), and, when he leaves to go get Lynda a beer after they've had sex, "I'll be right back. Don't get dressed." Not to mention that both of them have the most memorable deaths in the film.

Charles Cyphers (another cool person I've met at a convention), who appeared in every one of John Carpenter's films from Assault on Precinct 13 to Escape from New York, has a nice supporting role as Sheriff Leigh Brackett. While he doesn't have many scenes or that much to do, Cyphers is likable enough, particularly in his first appearance, when he accidentally scares Laurie, apologizes, and tells her, "You know, it's Halloween. I guess everybody's entitled to one good scare, huh?" I also like the scene where Laurie and Annie are driving and, when they see Brackett up ahead, the two of them scramble to get rid of the joints they've been smoking, as well as the little banter Annie has with her dad when they pull up to the curb. However, Brackett comes off as a bit lethargic in doing his job. He writes off the hardware store robbery as being the work of kids and isn't that concerned about the fact that rope and some knives were stolen. And when Dr. Loomis enlists his help in finding Michael Myers, Brackett, though at first willing to help, gradually loses his patience as the night goes on and he just sees the usual Halloween shenanigans. As eccentric as Loomis is, you'd think Brackett would be more willing to listen to the man who knows Michael best and is warning him that he's escaped and returned home. And even though Brackett's men are supposedly helping out, none of them spot Michael, even when he's wandering around the neighborhood where the girls are babysitting, and in pretty plain sight, leading to the deaths of several people, including Brackett's own daughter.

Tommy Doyle (Brian Andrews) is one of only two people in the movie who knows exactly what's going on. After being told by a group of bullies that the Boogeyman is coming for him that night, he comes to believe it's true when he sees the creepy figure of Michael lurking in the shadows across the street. Unfortunately, Tommy's the only one who sees the him, and every time he tries to alert Laurie, she chalks it up to his overactive imagination and gullibility (the fact that they're watching horror movies on TV probably doesn't help his case, either). Eventually, he gives up and goes on watching TV, but at the end of the movie, he learns he was pretty much on the nose. When Laurie wakes him up, frantically banging on the front door and screaming for him to let her in, Tommy immediately believes it's the Boogeyman when he opens the door for her and she tells him to hide upstairs with Lindsey. Then, when Laurie later assures the two of them that she killed Michael, Tommy tells her, "You can't kill the Boogeyman," and, proving him right, Michael appears at the top of the stairs behind her. The last we see of both Tommy and Lindsey, they, per Laurie's instructions, are running down the street to have someone call the police. Neither of them realize that their running out of the house, screaming, saves Laurie's life, as Dr. Loomis sees them, puts two and two together, and is able to stop Michael from strangling her. 

Speaking of Lindsey (Kyle Richards), she may not be as significant a character as Tommy, but she still manages to be memorable, mostly in how she's so glued to the TV that she's oblivious to virtually everything happening around her, including when the phone rings right next to her (when I was a kid, I did get pretty absorbed in whatever I was watching on TV, but not to that extent). She also tells Annie's boyfriend over the phone that she got stuck in the laundry room window while washing her clothes, even though she just asked Lindsey not to tell anyone about it. Finally, until the climax, it's up in the air whether or not she actually believes Tommy's rambling about the Boogeyman. She tells him that she does after Laurie scolds him for causing a fuss over it and scaring her, but I wonder if she's just saying that since she can see that he's upset. Regardless, there's no doubt that she believes Tommy during the climax, especially when the two of them actually see Michael.

The other person who knows what's going on is the great Donald Pleasence as Dr. Sam Loomis. Some have described Loomis as being unhinged himself but, while he is definitely creepy, with those beady eyes and that voice, I just see him as someone who's driven to stop the evil that he knows exists at all costs. He is very much like this film's version of Dr. Van Helsing, as he knows that, rather than just a psychotic serial killer, Michael Myers is pure, motiveless evil, a cold, conscience-free monster that only lives to kill and needs to be either put away forever or stopped dead in its tracks. But nobody takes his warnings seriously: not the doctors at Smith's Grove, which contributed to Michael escaping in the first place; the nurse who accompanies him to take Michael to his court date, or Sheriff Brackett when he finds no evidence of Michael in Haddonfield. It's all of little concern to Loomis, though. As he tells Brackett at one point, "Death has come to your little town, sheriff. You can either ignore it or you can help me to stop it," meaning he's willing to do what he must, even if it's by himself. However, that doesn't mean Loomis is completely fearless, as he admits to Brackett when they're investigating the old Myers house that the knowledge of what he is has made him terrified of Michael. Rather than a handicap, this fear actually fuels Loomis' drive. But as driven as he is, when he shoots Michael six times, only for him to disappear into the night, it's clear that Loomis realizes he's fighting a losing battle. Not only does his lack of any reaction say this, but so does the way he stares off into the darkness afterward. Like Tommy, he knows you can't kill the Boogeyman.

It's a testament to how interesting and well-acted a character Loomis is that, until you really think about it, you don't realize he's not an effective hero here, at all. As much as he's well-known for being the Van Helsing to Michael's Dracula, especially in the later movies, in this first one, after all of his talk about how Michael must be stopped, he spends much of the second and third acts at the Myers house, waiting for him to show up. Following the scene there between him and Brackett, his only

noteworthy moment before the climax is when he scares away Lonnie Elam and his friends when they dare Lonnie to go inside the house (an act that Loomis seems strangely pleased with himself about). It's only when he sees the car that Michael stole parked nearby that he decides to give up on waiting for him and begin actively searching the neighborhood. By this point, Michael has already killed three people, and is about to target Laurie. And it's only thanks to Tommy and Lindsey that Loomis realizes where Michael is and saves Laurie in the nick of time.

One character I want to quickly touch on is the graveyard keeper (Arthur Malet), who leads Loomis to Judith Myers' grave in the Haddonfield cemetery, only to discover that Michael has taken the headstone. I'm mentioning him mainly because, like many, I've always been curious about the story he's telling Loomis, about a guy named Charlie Bones who, fifteen years before, in the nearby town of Russellville, excused himself from the dinner table one night, went out to the garage, picked up a hacksaw, went back into the house, kissed his wife and his two children goodbye, and... that's it. Loomis interrupts him and he never comes back to it. That has always aggravated me and made irritated with Loomis. And finally, I've always felt really bad for poor Judith Myers (Sandy Johnson) in the opening, with how she's sitting there, brushing her hair and singing to herself, only to be completely blindsided by her kid brother attacking her with a knife; her cries of pain and anguish as she's stabbed repeatedly never fail to get to me. Plus, there's an extra bit of sadness in how her boyfriend, once the two of them have had sex, clearly has no intention of calling her like he promises before heading out the door (then again, considering how notoriously fast that sex was, I think she would've been better off, regardless).

Starting with Assault on Precinct 13, John Carpenter consistently displayed a knack for making his movies look as though they cost much more than they actually did. Halloween could've easily looked like a sleazy, grimy exploitation movie, like The Last House on the Left and such, but Carpenter instead took his love of classic Hollywood and gave it the polished, sleek look of an A-movie, through the use of the Panavision widescreen format, and having it developed and edited at MGM. The film is also notable as one of

the first to make extensive use of the Steadicam, specifically the Panaglide version, with smooth, elegant camerawork that gives you the feeling that you're in the hands of a very talented and confident filmmaker. There's no better example than that famous opening scene, which is actually done in three cuts but looks like it's all one tracking shot, and effectively gets across that we're seeing young Michael's first kill entirely through his POV. While not that long, there are several other instances of unbroken shots in the film, like when Laurie and

Tommy are walking to school, when Dr. Loomis walks out of Smith's Grove and to his car while arguing with Dr. Wynn, and when the girls walk home from school. Carpenter also makes great use of the Panavision lens, taking advantage of the frame's extra space in order to show the audience something that the characters don't see. Good examples are when, after Laurie drops the key off at the Myers house, she's unaware that Michael is watching her as she heads down the sidewalk;

when Loomis first meets with Brackett and is oblivious to Michael driving by behind him; when Annie is walking around in the kitchen, talking with Paul on the phone, and Michael appears and disappears in the open doorway behind her between pans; and the shot where Michael's mask slowly materializes in the darkness to Laurie's left after she finds her friends' bodies. And just like in The Thing from Another World, there are a number of distant and/or obscured shots of Michael throughout the first two acts, building up to when we get out first close-up of him in the third act, after he's killed Lynda.

Carpenter and cinematographer Dean Cundey also effectively create a difference in Haddonfield's look for different times of day. During the daytime, it looks serene and inviting, with a warm, sometimes almost orange, look to the film, the shining sun, and the town's overall safe, suburban feeling. But once that sun goes down, Haddonfield takes on a much creepier look. In fact, it's almost like it becomes another world, that Michael Myers' mere presence causes a veil of darkness and evil to descend upon it once

Halloween night begins. A lot of that has to do with the blue lighting effect that Cundey employed, which he's confirmed is meant to be moonlight. Some may say it doesn't look natural, but whenever I've looked outside when it's a full moon with no clouds, I have to say that it does look very similar (I hate that later DVD and Blu-Ray releases tended to reduce the amount of blue in the image). The way the environments look with patches of that blue, while the rest of it is pitch black, is very effective, giving a feeling that there could be

something lurking in those dark spots. And it's not just the exteriors, but also the interiors of the Doyle and Wallace houses throughout the second and third acts. At first, they're well lit and cozy, but as the story progresses, the lights seem to gradually go out. There are reasons for this, some benign, others more sinister. At the Doyle house, they dim the lights in order to watch horror movies and so the jack-o-lantern they've carved can glow in the dark, and eventually, Tommy and Lindsey go to

bed, leaving Laurie downstairs by herself. At the Wallace house, however, Michael turns the lights off after carrying Annie's body back into the house. Naturally, Lynda and Bob keep it dark when they have sex, with the only light coming from a jack-o-lantern on the nightstand, and after they've been killed, the house is completely dark when Laurie walks in, save for that light in the bedroom.

Many have noted how effective it was of Carpenter to set the film in a normal, nondescript town, giving it a feeling of reality, that it could be your town or my town. While I do agree with that notion and get why it works, I personally can't relate to it that much, as I live out in the woods in a very rural area. There is a small town just down the road but it's mostly businesses, with very few actual homes; most of the homes near my house are randomly placed outside town and, while there are sections with a few close together, you can hardly

call those towns in and of themselves. Still, there's no denying the effectiveness of that notion of a small, middle-America suburb's sense of innocence and safety being shattered when a killer is suddenly stalking the streets, and Carpenter is able to achieve that purely through visuals and atmosphere. As I said, Haddonfield initially comes off as quaint, tranquil, and completely safe, with ordinary-looking houses, elementary and high schools, and places of business. The only thing about it that's a bit eerie during the daytime are

those tree-lined streets, particularly when the camera is pointing straight down them. And as the sun sets, a sinister pall seems to gradually fall over the town, not just in the way it looks but in the atmosphere. It's already fairly creepy right after sundown, while there are people out trick-or-treating, but as it gets much later on in the evening and the trick-or-treaters gradually disappear from the streets, an eerie silence and stillness sets in. This is best exemplified in the sequence leading up

to the climactic chase, where Laurie walks across the street to the Wallace house. The combination of darkness and blue lighting, the emptiness of the streets, with the only sound being that of a dog barking off in the distance, and Carpenter's music make it nerve-wracking to watch Laurie walk towards this creepy, dark house, with the only light coming from a small jack-o-lantern on the porch. And then, there's the movie's ending, where Michael has disappeared and his presence seems to permeate every single part of Haddonfield.

We don't see much of Smith's Grove (at least in this version of the film), save for the driveway, the main yard, and the gate during the scene of Michael's escape, and a little bit of it in the daytime during the scene between Loomis and Dr. Wynn. But, while that latter glimpse is fairly innocuous, the concrete barriers and metal gates that we see when Loomis and Marion Chambers drive to the sanitarium and the main gate (all of which are actually the driveway and gate to the Hollywood Reservoir) make it come off as rather oppressive.

The brief scene where Loomis stops at a highway phone-booth to try to warn the authorities of Michael, and then finds the pickup truck from Phelps Garage, the driver of which Michael killed for his overalls, takes place in a sort of out-of-the-way location that I've always liked, with how lonely the highway feels and the nearby train tracks next to where he finds the truck. And then, there's the small cemetery that Loomis visits with the caretaker, another type of isolated location that I find personally appealing.

I don't think anybody would argue that the creepiest setting, day or night, is the dilapidated old Myers house. It looks a bit spooky during the opening, mainly due to the lighting and the construction of that scene through Michael's POV, but in "present day," it definitely looks like it could be haunted, even when Laurie drops a key off during her morning walk to school, and that's before we realize Michael is watching her from inside. Most significantly, the house is the center of what I consider to be the creepiest scene in the

film: when Dr. Loomis and Sheriff Brackett go inside that night. John Carpenter has a talent for creating a sense of eeriness in scenes where nothing is really going on, such as the one between Nick and Elizabeth in the ship's hold  in The Fog or when MacReady and Dr. Copper investigate the destroyed Norwegian camp in The Thing, and this scene is no exception. Watching Loomis and Brackett walk around this eerie, rundown, dark house, find the offscreen corpse of a dog that Michael apparently chomped on, and then

head up to the room where he murdered Judith, is creepy in and of itself, and then, there's a jump scare when a gutter suddenly smashes through the window. It may seem cheap at first, but when Loomis reacts by pulling out his pistol, it shows both the audience and Brackett that he is scared to death of Michael. This leads into the really creepy monologue Loomis gives about how he first met Michael as a child with an emotionless face and eerily dark eyes, and that he eventually realized

there was nothing within him but pure evil. This speech is made even more unsettling when you remember that Loomis is saying it in the very room where Michael committed his first act of evil, and Donald Pleasence, with the aid of Carpenter's score, pulls it off perfectly.

Of all the horror icons that came out of the 70's, 80's, and 90's, Michael Myers has always been my personal favorite. Leatherface, Jason Voorhees, Freddy Krueger, Chucky, and the like are all awesome as well, but there's something about Michael that not only appeals to me more but I've also found to be much more frightening. I think it's because he's more... indiscernible than the rest, who often have concrete backstories and easily defined motivations. Leatherface is a cannibalistic psychopath who was raised by an entire family of cannibalistic psychopaths; Jason Voorhees was a deformed kid who supposedly drowned at Camp Crystal Lake but, as it turned out, was living in the woods, became homicidal following the death of his beloved mother, and eventually became truly undead; Freddy Krueger was a child murderer who was burned alive and, in the afterlife, found a way to come back and haunt people's dreams; and so on. Michael is different. At first, he seems to be just another killer who was a bad seed from day one, murdering his sister when he was six years old, but once he escapes from Smith's Grove and heads back to Haddonfield, he becomes something else entirely. He is the Boogeyman, that thing in the dark that you're afraid of, and is seemingly able to become one with the night and appear and disappear at will. His ability to show up in places he couldn't possibly have gotten into so easily and silently, immense strength, and durability in taking punishment that would kill anybody else, suggest he could very well not even be human anymore. And most frightening of all, we don't know how he got that way. Granted, the sequels did try for an explanation, but the reason that doesn't bug me, and why I'm able to enjoy the series as a whole (for the most part), is because, not only do said explanations fail to expose every tiny detail about him, but this franchise now has so many different timelines that you can pick and choose which stories and characterizations of Michael work best for you. If you like the ending of this first film where he disappears into the night, leaving you with that feeling of unease, then don't go any further. If you want to see this first story come to a more concrete conclusion, watch Halloween II. If you still want more, either watch 4-6 or H20. If you don't like the beginning of Resurrection, just discount it and act like H20 is the finale of the series. If you want a radical reinvention, watch the Rob Zombie movies. And if none of those other movies following the first give you any satisfaction, try the Blumhouse trilogy. The series is like Michael himself: a lot of possible explanations but none that are definitive.

This first film is where Michael is at his most unknowable, as he's less of a character and more of an evil presence inhabiting the dark corners of Haddonfield on Halloween night. As we watch him stalk Laurie and her friends, we don't get a good look at him until the climax; we get either quick glimpses, often in shots where he's standing off in the distance, sometimes shrouded in total darkness, or closer shots where his masked face is hidden. Again, he seems to be able to appear out of nowhere and then disappear just as unexpectedly,

like when Laurie sees him looking at her from her neighbor's backyard and then, after a cut to her reaction, he's gone, or when she sees him watching her from across the street while she's in class and, in the short time she takes to answer her teacher's question, both he and the car he stole have disappeared. Another example, which gives us two in a row in fact, is when Annie goes to the Wallace house's separate laundry room to wash her clothes. When she looks away after hearing the door

loosely smack against the frame, there's a quick shot of Michael standing right outside, obscured by the window curtain, but when Annie looks in the very next cut, he's gone. Then, she gets locked in and we get a shot through the curtain of her yelling for Lindsey to pick up the ringing phone, in which you can also clearly see Michael watching her through what looks like the back window. And just like before, when Annie turns around, Michael isn't there, and she doesn't get attacked when she tries to climb out through the window. 

It seems like Michael is also able to manipulate the environment to his will. There's no explanation as to why the laundry room door slowly opens and closes by itself or why it suddenly shuts hard enough to lock Annie in (apparently, the lock is on the outside, which makes no sense). While you do see wind blowing outside at several points, there's none here, and the door shuts from the inside, no less. When Laurie walks into the dark Wallace house and find her slaughtered friends upstairs, there's no explanation for why Bob's body

suddenly swings down from inside the closet (or how he was even being kept up there) or why the door to the cabinet holding Lynda's body suddenly opens in front of Laurie. Also, how did Michael put a rake on the outside of the kitchen door and then have enough time to get back upstairs and hide in that dark room? When Laurie first enters the living room, she hears a rustle upstairs, indicating that Michael is up there, so for him to get downstairs while she's in the bedroom,

put that rake on the outside, and then get back up there before she comes screaming out of the room, he would have to be really moving and making quite a bit of noise. Hell, if he could move that fast, he could've just waited at the bottom of the stairs for her to try to come down, trapping her up there. And finally, when Laurie makes it back inside the Doyle house and tries to call the police, she sees that the window is already open and Michael is somewhere in the room. Again, how did he accomplish that in such a short time and without being seen or heard?

The terror in John Carpenter's films is almost always something that's faceless and undefinable, be it the undulating, apparently self-aware mist housing the decomposing apparitions in The Fog or the alien life-form that manages to blend in perfectly amongst a group of paranoid men in The Thing. In the case of Michael Myers, he's faceless in a literal sense due to his mask. Long before I saw the movie, I remember getting my first look at that mask when I saw it on the VHS covers for several of the Halloween movies at my local video

rental store. Again, I didn't know what the series was about at the time, so I didn't think much of it. I think I may have thought it was an actual face. However, when I first saw this movie and got my first clear look at Michael, I immediately put it together. In any case, there's no doubt as to why that mask is such an icon. It's not only creepy as all get-out due to just how bland and nondescript it is, but it's downright cool. With all of the masks that slasher movie villains wear, you can project

whatever is most terrifying to you onto it, but Michael's mask especially lends itself to that because of its plainness. You can also look at it as a mirror image of his own personality: blank, cold, and devoid of emotion. When he's standing in the shadows with that thing on, he has the vague look of a human being but not quite. In fact, if it weren't for his heavy breathing, you might not even think he's alive. It's akin to how, in Jaws, Quint says that when a shark comes at you with

those black, lifeless eyes, he doesn't seem to be alive until he bites you. Michael, with that white mask and those pitch black eye-holes, doesn't seem to be living until he attacks and kills, with his grunting and groaning being a frightening counterpoint to how silent he typically is.

Michael is so far from a concrete character here that nobody, not even most of the filmmakers, refer to him as an actual person. For one, the full name of "Michael Myers" is never uttered once in the film. Moreover, his first name is only uttered by his sister and father at the beginning (though you do hear the name Myers many times in reference to the house), and Dr. Loomis initially calls him "it" before Nurse Chambers corrects him. If he's referred to anything, it's as "the Boogeyman," thanks to Tommy Doyle, while the closing credits,

apart from the actors who briefly played him at different ages, list him as the Shape, as he was called in the script and which most of the people who worked on the film refer to him as. There's not even one concrete actor identified with having played him here. While it is well-known that Nick Castle played him for the most part, many others stepped in at various points: production designer and editor Tommy Lee Wallace played him whenever he destroyed part of the set; stuntman

Jim Windburn did the ending fall over the balcony; Tony Moran did the split-second unmasking scene; when Michael kills the Wallace family's dog, Lester, it's the dog's handler; the six-year old Michael at the beginning is played by Will Sandin when he's unmasked by his dad; and producer Debra Hill did the taking out of the knife and the stabbing of the older sister, as well as stood in for Castle in some of the distant shots. (Supposedly,

John Carpenter himself played Michael at some point but it's unclear where.) And Castle has said that Carpenter gave him almost no direction whatsoever, instead telling him to just walk, move this way and that way, and so on.

Slasher fans and gorehounds may be disappointed when they first watch this film and discover that, not only is there hardly any blood, but the kills aren't that intricate, just stabbings and strangling. However, that wasn't the type of movie Carpenter was trying to create, and there really wasn't a template for it yet, either. The focus is on creating terror and suspense in a Hitchcockian manner. In fact, as Kim Newman says in the documentary, Halloween: 25 Years of Terror, Michael seems more interested in stalking and scaring his victims

than actually killing them. He could've easily come up behind Bob and slashed his throat when he was getting a beer but, instead, he slowly lures him over to the closet he's hiding in and waits for him to open it, then bursts out and attacks. He also could've easily killed Annie before she got into her car but he decided to mess with her a little bit first: locking her car door, unlocking it by the time she went inside and got her keys, and fogging up the windshield (or maybe he soaped it; I can never quite tell), confounding her when she climbs and

sees it, as well as when she realizes she didn't need to unlock the door. Then, he finally grabs her from the backseat and kills her. In addition, Michael does some odd, almost playful things that you hardly see him do in any of the other movies. While using his victims' bodies as macabre decorations is something he does quite frequently throughout the franchise, he also steals his sister's headstone and places it in the bedroom with Annie's body (both elaborate and quite demented in

how he desecrates his own sister's grave), and acts as though he's Bob dressing up as a ghost to scare Lynda. That latter gag particularly surprised me when I first saw, as I'd never seen a villain do anything quite like it. And again, he could've very easily just come in and killed Lynda, but he decided to screw with her a little bit first, standing in the doorway and staring at her while wearing that sheet and Bob's glasses. 

Laurie, however, is the one Michael seems to love tormenting the most. He waits for her to find all of her dead friends before finally coming after her and even then, I don't think he accidentally misses when he simply grazes her arm with his knife. I think he does it on purpose because he wants to have some more fun with her. He then chases her downstairs and through the kitchen, and even though he busts through and opens the locked door before she manages to get outside, he waits a while before continuing the chase. He lets her get across

the street, pound on someone's door, yelling for help, and finally run back to the Doyle house before he comes out of the Wallace house and walks across the street after her. Even after they both get inside the Doyle house, I think Michael, again, misses her on purpose when he stabs the couch cushion right next to her. There's no reason why he should've missed, as she doesn't see him coming and doesn't move. And when he appears at the top of the stairs after she stabs him in the neck

with the knitting needle, he waits until she gets Tommy and Lindsey safely locked in another room before starting the chase again, as this game doesn't concern them. At that point, though, I do think that Michael has had enough and is actively trying to kill Laurie, seeing as how forcefully he busts through the closet door and stabs at her.

As bloodless as the kills are, they do leave an impact. I hinted earlier that the one that's always disturbed me personally is the opening one, where six-year old Michael brutally stabs his older sister, Judith. Not only is it troubling because you learn that the killer is a little kid (although I knew that going in) but, again, Judith's screaming, both in pain and shock over her baby brother attacking her like this, is gut-wrenching. The aftermath, where she falls over dead, with only her underwear on, and blood across her breasts, is the closest the

movie comes to feeling like an exploitation flick. The second death, that of the mechanic whose jumpsuit Michael takes, happens offscreen but you do see the aftermath, with the guy's naked body lying in the weeds. You don't know what Michael did to him, but the bit of blood on his mouth and bloody stab wounds on his chest suggests it wasn't pretty. Even though it's technically not a kill since you don't see anything, I do want to comment on the dead dog that Loomis and Brackett find at the

old Myers house. For a while, I thought Dr. Loomis' comment that Michael, "Got hungry," was referring to his appetite for murder, only to later realize they did mean he took a bite out of the dog. Not only is that idea horrific in and of itself (and something later movies would unnecessarily elaborate on in gruesome details), but I also hope to God he killed it before chomping on it! Later on, Michael kills another dog, the Wallace family's German Shepherd, Lester, when he spots him

sneaking around the outside of the house. It's not clear quite how Lester dies, since you only see their legs in the shot, but I've always assumed Michael strangled him or broke his neck.. at least, that's how I hope Michael killed him, given what he did to that other poor dog.

Now, we get to the main deaths, the first of which is Annie (I'm telling you, Michael didn't care for that "speed kills" crack she gave him earlier). Her death is memorable just for how long it takes for Michael to kill her. He pops up in the backseat of her car, grabs her throat, and attempts to strangle her, but that proves to be more difficult than he originally planned, due to the angle of his arm and her struggling. You can see Michael get visibly frustrated when he shakes her throat and grunts loudly, and when she still won't die, he takes out

his knife and slashes her throat, leading to a fairly disturbing shot from outside the car as her head slowly falls onto the wheel and her eyelids slump down. Next is Bob, down in the Wallace house's kitchen. The part where he opens up the closet and Michael comes charging out caused me to about hit the ceiling when I first saw this movie, but I don't think that airing on USA showed the actual kill; instead, I think they cut immediately to when Michael appears in the bedroom doorway with that sheet over him. I can kind of understand why

because, lack of blood aside, it is a fairly horrific kill, with Michael lifting Bob up against the wall, stabbing the knife into him, which we don't see but do hear, and a shot of Bob's feet going limp as he dies (for me, that latter part is much more hideous than any gory effect Carpenter and his crew could've showed you). And then, we have that famous moment where Michael looks at his handiwork and tilts his head back and forth like an inquisitive dog, one of his very few instances of

emotion. Finally, there's Lynda's death, which is quite basic: Michael comes up behind her and strangles her with the telephone cord. For me, the choking and gagging noises that PJ Soles makes are unintentionally funny. Even worse is how she sounds like she's having an orgasm, and Michael's standing right behind her, combined with the gyrating she does while he's killing her, adds to its eyebrow-raising nature. Fortunately, Carpenter immediately remedies this by having Michael creepily put the phone up to his ear after he kills Lynda so he can listen to Laurie's voice.

I wasn't kidding back at the beginning when I said the last fifteen to twenty minutes had me scared to death when I first saw the movie. It's such a perfectly put together release of all the tension Carpenter has built up throughout the film and with so many great setpieces, from Laurie discovering her friends' bodies and the classic shot of Michael's face materializing out of the darkness next to her, to Laurie frantically running out of the house and screaming for help (what a douche that one person was for ignoring her pleas, by the way), and her

banging on the door for Tommy to let her in, as Michael walks across the Wallaces' lawn and street towards her, all with Carpenter's awesome music driving it. And just when you think it's over when Laurie stabs Michael in the neck, it suddenly starts up again when he appears at the top of the stairs behind her. That leads to another awesome moment where she locks herself in the bedroom closet and tries to fool Michael by opening the door to the balcony to make him think she jumped. Michael, however, isn't fooled and bursts his way through

the closet door, and as he stabs at her in the confined space, she manages to put a hanger right in his eye, then stabs him right in the gut. Again, you think it's over and everyone's safe, but, yet again, when Laurie sends the kids off to get help, Michael sits up behind her, gets to his feet (I don't know how Nick Castle does that without using his hands to push himself up), slowly lumbers up behind Laurie as she walks out of the bedroom in a daze, and grabs her, attempting to strangle her. In

the struggle, she rips the mask off and you get the only clear glimpse of his face in not only this movie but almost the entire series. Oddly enough, instead of killing her right then and there, Michael first stops to put his mask back on (as Carpenter himself says on his audio commentary, it's as if he can't live without it), giving Dr. Loomis, who's arrived just in time, the chance to empty his six-shooter into him and send him flying off the balcony. But if you think the movie is going to end

with Michael finally dead and everyone safe, you really don't know John Carpenter, as he hardly ever ends a movie happily (at best, they're bittersweet). Loomis discovers that Michael's body is gone, Laurie begins to cry in terror, and Loomis warily looks out into the night, as we get a final montage of all the locations in Haddonfield where Michael has been, accompanied by his breathing, indicating that he could be anywhere. A long time ago, I read a detailed synopsis on some website, the name of which I've long since forgotten, and I remember really liking the way the writer summed up the ending: "Haddonfield has not seen the last of this terrifying creature. He may return another Halloween night." I couldn't have put it better.

As much as I love Halloween, there are some holes that I can poke into it. I'm not going to be nitpicking dumb stuff like how Michael was able to find a mechanic wearing a pristine clean jumpsuit, how he could know how drive, or that you can see palm trees in the background of some shots; rather this is some stuff that has always made me scratch my head. During the opening, I've always wondered where Michael was coming from when he walks across the street towards his house, sneaks inside, and kills his sister. You'd assume he

was coming back from trick-or-treating, but when he looks through the window at Judith and her boyfriend as they're making out on the couch, the boyfriend asks if they're alone and she answers, "Michael's around someplace." So, if she thought he was somewhere in the house, why was he across the street? Did he go out into the dark for a little while and get himself psyched up for what he was about to do? Incidentally, aren't his parents rather calm when they come home to find their son standing there, holding a knife that's dripping with

blood (especially the mother, who just puts her hands in her coat's pockets, as if she's very disappointed in him). When Dr. Loomis and Nurse Chambers arrive at Smith's Grove, not only has Michael gotten loose but several inmates are walking around on the front lawn. I don't care about how Michael got outside, because it's made clear that nobody listened to Loomis about the precautions that needed to be taken, and you could assume he injured or killed those who were

supposed to be guarding him, but how did those other inmates get out? Did Michael let them out as well? Were they all on a chain gang or something and Michael killed the guard, allowing the others to get loose too? And why in the hell does Nurse Chambers roll down the window when Michael climbs atop the car? That's a prime example of somebody in a horror movie doing something incredibly dumb and it sticks out in a film where the characters, mostly, make sensible decisions.

When exactly did Michael get his mask? Initially, it seems obvious that it wasn't until late that afternoon, when the girls pull up to talk to Sheriff Brackett and he tells them the hardware store was robbed. But when Michael is stalking Laurie and her friends throughout the day, he's already wearing the mask. So did he steal it when he first arrived in Haddonfield and, later on, went back to get his knives and then set off the alarm? Ignoring the fact that nobody saw him do this in broad daylight, and the question of why a hardware store

would be selling Halloween masks, I find it hard to believe that the store's bell would've been ringing all day long and nobody would've noticed until it was almost dark. For a bit, I thought it might not have even been Michael who robbed the store, as he could've easily taken the knife from the Wallaces' kitchen while Annie was taking Lindsey over to the Doyle house, since Annie's death is the first time he uses it. But, then again, they do make a point of letting us know the store had been robbed and what was stolen, so it had to have been

him (I was going to say that, since he never uses the rope that was also said to have been stolen, it might not have been him, but now that I think about it, that's probably how he tied Bob upside down in the closet). Still, the timeline of events doesn't add up. And I also don't get the moment where, after those bullying kids cause Tommy to fall on his pumpkin, one of them runs down the steps and Michael suddenly appears and grabs his shoulders. You'd think it was because the kid was

about to run into him but, if you look, you'll notice that it just seems like Michael reached out and grabbed him for no reason. Did he just need to freak somebody out? And finally, there's the moment when, after waiting at the Myers house for most of the night, Dr. Loomis just happens to look down the street and sees the car that Michael took the night before. How did both he and Sheriff Brackett not see that? And what's more, how was Loomis even able to see it, given how the Myers

house appears to be in a secluded section of town? There's no evidence to suggest that Michael moved the car from where he originally parked, nor would he have any reason to. The easy answer to this and everything else I've mentioned is that it's stuff Carpenter and his crew didn't think about, and had no need to, either. They were just concerned with making an effective horror film for the small amount of money that they had.

I must confess that, during the exterior daytime scenes, I do sometimes have a hard time buying that we're in the Midwest in late fall, and not just because of the shots of palm trees here and there, which I can easily overlook. It always looks a little too bright and warm, whereas I typically think of Halloween as being overcast and cool. Not that every single Halloween I've personally experienced living in the South has been like that, as there have been plenty of fairly warm and sunny ones (as well as a couple during my lifetime where it actually

snowed), but that's the image I, and I think a lot of people, have of the holiday. Also, despite all of the dead leaves they make sure to have blowing into the shots and the trick-or-treating extras, the very lush, green trees lining the streets belie the fact that it was actually shot in the springtime. And finally, the landscape of that spot where Dr. Loomis uses the payphone and then finds the Phelps garage truck looks very much like it's in California rather than Illinois. Once night falls, though, none of this is a problem, and what I've been talking about isn't a big deal in and of itself, but you know me: I can't help but be a little nitpicky.

Although it's mostly little more than background for the story, I think the movie captures the look, feel, and atmosphere of Halloween fairly well, opening up with that memorable title sequence of the camera slowly approaching a jack-o-lantern, as the orange credits roll and the lighting around the jack-o-lantern goes out when the camera has zoomed into its right eye, and followed by the sound of kids reciting that rhyme before the movie actually begins. You get some shots of trick-or-treaters during the main story, some TPed houses in

the background of some shots, and more than your fair share of jack-o-lanterns used as decorations, as well as how Laurie, Tommy, and Lindsey make one and walk through the dark house carrying it, making ghost sounds, before placing it on a table, not to mention that a horror movie marathon is playing on TV. Of course, Michael Myers himself becomes a monstrous embodiment of Halloween traditions, with his wearing a costume when he kills Judith, a mask during his adult killing spree, putting a sheet over himself to come off as Bob

playing a prank on Lynda, his own type of deadly "pranks," and the way he displays his victims' bodies as grisly decorations, as well as how his old family home has become regarded as the neighborhood "haunted house." And finally, the eerie nighttime scenes, with the occasional blowing wind and the sounds of hooting owls and barking dogs in the distance, perfectly captures what the holiday is really about and what I associate with it.

Even though I think most of it is ridiculous, I might as well comment on some of the themes and subtext that people have seen in Halloween, and this will extend to other slasher movies as well. First, there's the notion that the POV shots are intended to make you identify with Michael and, as a result, can lead to misogyny and sadism on the viewer's part; I think that's a load of crap. For one, that technique is meant to create tension and suspense, to let you know that Michael is there, watching his victims, and could kill them at any

moment. For another, the only time the POV shot is, in fact, used in this first film is during the opening. Granted, there are plenty of shots from Michael's point of view in the other movies, but accusing this first film of doing it all the time suggests you didn't even watch it. And finally, regardless of the fact that one kill is shown through a POV, you may recall that I said it was the death in the movie that disturbs me the most to this day. I know there are some sick people out there who would derive enjoyment from it but I'm not one of them, and I don't think the majority of people who watch this movie are, either.

Of course, the biggest criticism towards Halloween and slasher movies, in general, is that they're said to portray women as screaming, terrified victims, and that they're morality tales which say if you have pre-marital sex, you're going to die. As to that first argument, it makes me wonder if people remember that Laurie fights back against Michael and manages to even critically injure him. Some would argue that she's only truly saved when Loomis comes in and shoots Michael, but remember that even then, he doesn't stop him, as

Michael isn't a normal man; if he were, Laurie would have killed him long before Loomis got there. Plus, critics act like women are the only ones who get killed in these movies. Remember the poor guy who Michael killed for his clothes, leaving him naked in the weeds? Or Bob, the focus of one of the movie's most well-known scenes? And as for that pre-marital sex notion, while I can't deny that Laurie is the one virgin amongst her group of friends, this isn't always the case in slasher films. Hilariously enough, the most critically derided

horror series of the 80's, Friday the 13th, had several glaring examples. In the original movie, it's highly suggested that Alice, the last survivor, had some sort of relationship with Steve Christy, who was getting Camp Crystal Lake ready to reopen. She does get killed at the beginning of Part 2, but that happens all the time, even with virginal characters (like Rachel in Halloween 4 and 5, which we'll get to). Speaking of Part 2, that film's heroine, Ginny, clearly has a romantic night with her boyfriend Paul and yet lives. Some critics even

try to argue that Michael's drive for killing these promiscuous women is a "psychosexual fury" from seeing his sister have sex with her boyfriend when he was a kid, and that the kills are all sexual in nature. Again, did we forget about the men that Michael bumps off? Did he kill them due to pent up psychosexual fury too? But my favorite is when one critic argued that the moment where Laurie rips Michael's mask off is meant to be a type of masochistic pleasure, that he's willingly

submitting himself to her and it will make his return to power (putting his mask back on) all the more satisfying. How in the hell do these people come up with this junk? Michael Myers doesn't care about your gender, sexual preference, whether or not you're a virgin, your race, etc.; if he sees you, he's going to kill you, because he's just evil. Ironically, John Carpenter himself has said that if any character in the film has a sexual axe to grind, it's Laurie, whom, as he says, releases all of her

sexually repressed energy during the climax, attacking Michael with a phallic symbol, i.e. sharp objects like his own knife. In other words, all these critics were way off about what subtext the director himself intended. But even then, I don't look at the movie that way. To me, it's just a well-done little horror film about an evil man who terrorizes his hometown on Halloween night and eventually comes up against a victim who won't go down without a fight.

One bit of analysis that I will give some credence to is that Halloween is an example of the danger of suburbia, that it spits in the face of those who attempt to escape the evil influences of the city by settling in a small, "innocent" town like Haddonfield. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre had already tackled this by showing the evil that exists in the supposedly innocent countryside but, whereas that film featured a character who did horrible things because he was raised by a psychotic family, Halloween takes it one step

further with Michael having been born and raised in suburbia, far from the evil influences of the city, and yet turned out to not only be a bad seed but something much more terrifying and undefinable. And given how the film's very story is about him returning to his hometown to continue his killing spree, unbeknownst to everyone living there, I can definitely see how it can be seen as a warning that small towns aren't as pure and safe as you might think. (In fact, you could say a lot slasher films do

this since they often take place in similar environments, particularly A Nightmare on Elm Street, with the backstory that, among the inhabitants of the white-bread town of Springfield, was Freddy Krueger, making his razor-fingered gloves and murdering innocent children.)

I've never watched the extended TV version, even though it is part of the Scream Factory box-set, which I got in 2015, but I have seen what was added in order to fill out the time-slot. Since it was shot by John Carpenter himself, during production on Halloween II, the new stuff does seem like it would blend well with the original material. My favorite added scene is the first one, with Dr. Loomis talking to a hospital review board about Michael, as it fleshes out Loomis' claim that nobody in authority at Smith's Grove took his claims seriously. He asks them to transfer Michael to a maximum security ward, but they refuse, given that he's virtually comatose. Loomis tells them it's just a conscious act, but they don't take him seriously. Donald Pleasence, as usual, is awesome here, especially in the moment after the review board meeting, where he goes to Michael's cell and tells him, as he's staring out the window, "You've fooled them, haven't you, Michael? But not me." It's the only time we get to see Loomis interact with Michael as a patient rather than a monster he's trying to stop. (There's a slight discrepancy, though, as this takes place only a few months after Michael murdered Judith, and

Loomis later tells Sheriff Brackett that he spent eight years trying to reach Michael before spending another seven trying to keep him locked away. You could argue that maybe Loomis tried afterward to reach Michael but, given how convinced he already seems of his evil nature, I doubt that.) Equally interesting is a later scene in Michael's cell after he's escaped, where Loomis finds the word "SISTER" scratched onto the door, a more concrete tie to Halloween II's controversial twist (it's weird that Carpenter would put that in, given

given his disdain for that idea). There's also some dialogue between Loomis and the nurses that sheds a little more light on the nature of Michael's escape, including how the other patients ended up outside. Finally, there's an extra scene between Laurie and Lynda, where the latter comes over to ask if she can borrow a blouse she likes, right before Annie calls to ask for the same blouse. Lynda also says she noticed Michael following her and she and Laurie talk about it. The way the scene ends, with Laurie looking out the window, softly singing to herself is a little eerie to me. Overall, though mostly superfluous, this new footage is interesting to see.

An aspect of Halloween that especially stuck with me after I first watched it was the music, particularly that iconic theme. I can remember, shortly after I saw the movie, I was at Wal-Mart and one of the TV monitors, which played trailers for movies when you scanned the barcode below them, inexplicably played a portion of the trailer for Halloween 4 and I heard that music again; it was just as effective as it was the first time around. There's a reason why that theme is absolutely classic, as it's basically the perfect motif for a horror film: creepy, unsettling, and relentless. It sets a perfect mood right from the beginning, playing during the opening credits, growing more and more intense the closer the camera gets to the jack-o-lantern, and becoming downright terrifying when the exterior light on it goes out when the camera has zoomed into its eye. When I first saw the movie on VHS, I was quite pleasantly surprised when the credit, "Music by John Carpenter," came up. I couldn't believe this guy was a composer as well, something I'd never heard about any other director, let alone the creator of such an awesome and legendary piece of music. I think that's when I truly started to admire Carpenter, especially when I learned that he's done the music for just about all of his movies.

However, the main theme is only the tip of the iceberg that is this score. First, you have the music that plays when Michael closes in on Judith at the beginning, which starts with a high-pitched zing, a note which holds for an eternity, accompanied momentarily by an eerie piano spot, before hitting you with a loud, horrific bang when Michael stabs Judith. Another piano piece that you hear when Michael walks down the stairs and out the front door, with the high-pitched note finally trailing off, is repeated many times throughout the film, like when Michael is stalking the kids or when you see the truck driver's body. Laurie's theme, which first plays when she's walking to school, is a bit quieter and not as creepy as the rest of the music, but it still has an uneasy undercurrent to it, possibly hinting at how oblivious she is to the danger that's out there. For me, the creepiest part of the score is the Myers house theme, first heard when Loomis and Brackett arrive to look inside. It is so damn eerie, with the piano part at the beginning, leading into a section where you only hear a slight pinging sound, and the piano then returning to sound even more forceful and frightening than before. It successfully hints at the horrific events that took place there fifteen years before, as well as the notion that it's the birth place of an unspeakable evil. It goes away for a few minutes when Loomis and Brackett reach Judith's old bedroom, but effectively plays again when Loomis gives his creepy speech about Michael. Finally, there's the "Shape Stalks" theme, which you hear whenever Michael closes in for the kill. While I actually prefer the version of it in Halloween II, I do like it here, though only during the chase between Michael and Laurie. The rest of the time it's played, it sounds lighter and not as threatening. The same goes for the main theme as well in some scenes, like when Michael follows Tommy after school or when Loomis finds the car. In fact, in the scene where Michael drives past the girls, the music changes its tone when he slams on the brakes after Annie's, "Speed kills!" line (I have heard it corrected in some releases). There are some other interesting sounds on the soundtrack, like these loud stings that accompany the jumpscares, and those really bizarre, electronic ones you hear during Michael's escape. And during the main theme, I've always made out the clicking of a synthesizer or some sort of machine in the background.

John Carpenter's Halloween is truly a classic. It's skillfully crafted, beautifully photographed, has great acting all around, creates tension and suspense without being overtly violent and gory, introduces an awesome and iconic villain, has an equally iconic music score, and, overall, is just a downright creepy and fun flick. I can poke some holes in it here and there, but they don't take away from my enjoyment of it at all. Whether he likes it or not, it is the film that became Carpenter's industry calling card and will always be the movie with which his name is immediately identified, but I wouldn't say that's necessarily a bad thing, as it's a real testament of his ability to make a lot out of very little. If you have somehow never laid eyes on this movie, you owe it to yourself to check it out if you're at all a fan of horror movies. And even if you have seen it before, like me, go ahead and check it out again this October because, let's face it, what better movie is there to celebrate the Halloween season?

Franchises: The First Superman Film Series. Superman Returns (2006)

In 2005, Batman was finally redeemed from nearly a decade's worth of mockery due to Batman & Robin and made awesome again with the release of Batman Begins. This, along with the enormous successes of Spider-Man 1 and 2 before it, signaled that superhero movies were back in a big way and that they were also now being viewed with a lot more respect rather than being written off as simply kids' stuff. And, therefore, since the Caped Crusader had returned to movie screens, it wasn't all that surprising when the Man of Steel did the same the following year. I know that Warner Bros. had been trying to do another Superman movie for a long time and that they were already well into production when Batman Begins was released but I'm pretty sure that the big critical and commercial success of that film really inspired them to hype up this flick. Speaking from a personal standpoint, I hadn't yet seen the original Superman at this time and I also wasn't very interested in the character either, so the announcement of Superman Returns didn't have much of an impact on me (I was impressed by how they were able to find someone who looked a lot like Christopher Reeve, though). I only started to become really interested in Superman the very summer that Superman Returns was released when I saw the documentary  Look Up In The Sky! The Amazing Story of Superman on A&E as well as when I finally got my first  substantial look of the original Christopher Reeve movie. That said, though, I still didn't see Superman Returns in the theater...

...and from everything that I heard and read at the time, I hadn't missed much. The impression that I got from both critics and general audiences was that the film was a huge letdown and did not live up to the hype that came with it. The biggest criticisms I heard was that the film wasn't very exciting, that it was overlong and plodding, which, looking back on them, remind me a lot of the reception that Ang Lee's Hulk got back in 2003 (for the record, I really like that film) and even at the time, I was thinking to myself, "Wow, it looks like this was just another over-hyped, bloated comic book movie." I got my first look at the movie after Christmas that year when I was at Wal-Mart and they had it playing on those TVs they sometimes have set up. I actually got there early enough to see the opening titles and even though I didn't pay much attention to it, they looked promising enough from what I saw and the movie was also using the John Williams theme, which was cool. But, I still didn't think much about it afterward until the following summer when I had really become interested in the Superman character and was now a big fan of the original movie. That was when I finally saw Superman Returns when I bought it on DVD along with both versions of Superman II and Superman III and when I finally did see it, I understood why it wasn't that popular of a movie. While my opinion on it has softened since then, I wasn't all that impressed with the movie after that first viewing. I thought to myself, "Well, everybody's right: it's way too long and there's not enough excitement." Honestly, while I won't say that I ever hated it, I didn't go all that easy on it after that first viewing either. Part of that could be due to some personal issues I was going through at the time but another part of it is simply due to the fact that, despite the good intentions that went into it, Superman Returns is a very flawed and, in some aspects, not very well thought out film. I don't think it's horrible and there is some good stuff here in my opinion but, on the whole, I can totally understand why it wasn't that big of a hit with the general public in 2006.

Five years ago, astronomers discovered what they believed were the remains of Krypton and, upon hearing this, Superman disappeared to embark upon a journey through the universe to see for himself. However, he has now returned to Earth after not having found anything and resumes his job at the Daily Planet as Clark Kent, discovering that not only has Lois Lane won her long desired Pulitzer Prize for an article entitled, "Why the World Doesn't Need Superman," but that she also now has both a fiancé and a child. Circumstances soon arise that force Clark to become Superman and reveal to the entire world and Lois, who is involved in the incident at hand, that he's back. At the same time, the evil Lex Luthor, who was released from prison due to Superman's failure to appear at his trial, has used the fortune he received from a deceased widow that he married to begin his criminal activities again. He steals a handful of crystals from the Fortress of Solitude and intends to use their unique properties to grow a new continent off the East Coast, destroying North America in the process, killing billions of people, and giving him full control of the only land available for any survivors. It's not too long before Luthor puts his plan into action and Superman must risk his own life, due to the continent's Kryptonite-laden crust, to save not only Lois and her small family but countless other lives as well. 

To date, Superman Returns is the only film by Bryan Singer that I've ever seen, which is sad, I know, since this is hardly his best film from what I hear. While I'm pretty sure that I will see The Usual Suspects some time down the road since I've heard it's a really good flick, I have no interest whatsoever in his X-Men movies, or any other X-Men movie, for that matter, since I've never been a fan of those characters in any capacity. In any case, I can understand why they eventually went with Singer to bring Superman back to the big screen. After going through so many screenplays and a varied lot of writers and directors like Kevin Smith, Tim Burton (personally, I'm glad that he didn't direct it; in my opinion, his dark, quirky style may have worked for Batman but I don't think it would have meshed well with Superman), McG, and J.J. Abrams, Singer's success with the first two X-Men movies made him a no-brainer for the gig. And in addition, Singer has stated many times how much he loves the first Superman and, as a show of respect, actually asked for Richard Donner's opinion on his story pitch for Superman Returns. So, it seemed like Warner Bros. was on the right track by hiring him. Unfortunately, though, I think Singer's love for the original film ended up being this movie's biggest hindrance. Now, if you've read my review of the first Superman, you'd know how much I truly love that film and, therefore, I completely respect and encourage Singer's admiration of it. But, I think he got so caught up in continuing that movie's storyline and making a movie as similar to it as possible that he ended up making one that has a major feeling of, "Been there, done that." As we'll get into, I think that's the biggest problem with Superman Returns: it may have been a new Superman movie but it was so stuck in the past that it didn't offer anything that fresh or exciting.

For a concrete example of my above criticism, let's briefly look over how the story of the movie flows as well as some of the details. When Superman returns to Earth after failing to find the remains of Krypton, he not only crashes near his widowed mother's farm but the ship he does so in looks like a much larger version of the pod he landed on Earth in as a baby in the first movie (are Kryptonian spaceships just incapable of landing without crashing?). When he first becomes Superman, we see him running through the streets of Metropolis and open his shirt to reveal the 'S', just as we did in the original movie. In addition, his first act as Superman is to prevent a disaster that would have killed Lois Lane (the only difference here is that it's an airplane instead of a helicopter and there many more people in jeopardy as well) and after doing so, he informs everyone that, despite this little incident, flying is still the safest way to travel. Lois also faints at the end of both sequences. After he makes his return known, Perry White calls everyone together to tell them that he wants it all in print, just like he did after Superman first revealed himself to the world in the first movie. When he and Lois meet each other for the first time after the rescue, they have a small interview that leads to him flying her around the city. Lex Luthor's plan here is simply a more amped up, catastrophic version of his real estate scheme from the first movie (this time, instead of simply destroying the West Coast, he plans on destroying the whole of North America) and, also like before, he steals some Kryptonite from a museum in order to ensure that Superman won't interfere (again, the use of the Kryptonite here is a beefed up version of how Luthor used it before). Speaking of Luthor here, he even has a new female cohort who is visibly disgusted by his psychotic nature and ultimately betrays him at the end, ensuring that he won't be able to attempt this scheme again. Do you get my point yet? Homage is okay but when you borrow so many elements from a past film and actually build your movie around them, you're going to give your audience a feeling of deja vu and trust me, that novelty quickly wears off and can negatively affect the viewing experience.

Let's be frank about Brandon Routh: the reason that he was cast is because he looks a lot like Christopher Reeve. I'm not saying that he's a bad actor, and I also don't think that he was particularly bad in this movie, but his similarity to Reeve had to have been their incentive for putting him in the suit. While I can't fault them for that since this movie is supposed to be in continuity with the first two (I'll get into the many problems with that later, though), that's about as far as it goes. Again, Routh isn't terrible but at the same time, he's not memorable either since he's only meant to be a stand-in for Reeve. Plus, he just doesn't have the charisma and charm that Reeve did and I feel bad for saying that because he does seem to be trying and you also have to think about what a burden it must have been for him to step into that costume and play Superman in the same continuity  as arguably the most beloved actor to ever take on the role (compare it to when George Lazenby temporarily replaced Sean Connery as James Bond and I think you'll get the idea). But, that said, I have to be honest: try as he might, Routh is no Christopher Reeve. He looks good in the suit, I'll give him that, but the way he plays Superman as well as Clark Kent in private is very one-note. His voice never changes when he plays those two sides of the character and his emotions don't seem to either. The only time I saw any real change in him as Superman was during the last third of the movie when he was struggling to thwart Luthor's plan due to the Kryptonite and when he visits his son at the end. Other than that, I think he looks good as Superman but that's pretty much it. And as for when he plays Clark Kent at the Daily Planet... (sigh) again, all I can see is him trying to duplicate what Reeve did when playing that side of the character. He had all the mannerisms: the clumsiness, the slouching, the constant adjusting of the glasses, the slight stutter etc., but he came across as a copycat and not actually as the character. And for that matter, he doesn't change his voice that much from when he's being Clark and when he's being Superman. That was one of the reasons why you could buy people not recognizing Reeve's Clark as being Superman: the nervous, slightly high-pitched voice as well as the clumsiness. All Routh does is tone his Superman voice down just a couple of notches and add a slight stutter and feeling of nervousness. That actually makes me wonder why nobody realizes that he's Superman since it's so obviously a put-on and also makes me not buy the moment when Lois and her fiancé Richard briefly wonder if that is the case but then dismiss it. In conclusion, Routh is not horrible at all and feels sincere but at the same time, he's trying to be a stand-in for Christopher Reeve and that's an impossible task. No one will ever be able to replace Reeve or match what he did as the character and they shouldn't have even tried.

As for the costume that Routh wears as Superman... eh, it's okay. It's a decent updating of the classic costume that Reeve wore and I understand that probably wouldn't work in this day and age but I still prefer it. This costume's colors are a little too dark, especially the cape and boots with their rather dull, brown-like color (I've seen other pictures and while they were  apparently red, they still look brown in the actual movie to me) and leathery texture instead of the bright red, robe-like cape and royal guard-like boots that Reeve wore. This is just me but I think that Superman's suit should have really bright colors and Batman is the one whose suit should be very dark. In fact, doesn't this suit kind of look like the one that Evil Superman wore in Superman III? I just hit upon that when I watched that movie again in order to do these reviews but if you look at them side by side, they do look very similar. And finally, the 'S' has always looked funky to me. The texture of it when you see it in close-up like up above  makes me think of what the 'S' on a Superman Halloween costume would look like; it has that assembly line look and feel to it. In actuality, the reason the 'S' looks that way is because it's made up of a bunch of little 'S's' (until I saw that close picture up above, I was never able to make that out) but still, it doesn't look all that genuine to me. By this point, you probably think I hate the Superman suit in this movie and while I really don't, I still do have a lot of personal issues with it (but then again, I'm a weird guy so there's that too).



Yeah, just keep pretending like there's something meaningful between
you two.

What ever personal issues you may have with Brandon Routh, at least he was trying to bring to life a performance, which is more than I can say for Kate Bosworth as Lois Lane. My God, I don't think they could have picked a worse actor for that role if they tried. Bosworth gives one of the most flat, emotionless performances possible. There's none of the spunk or fire that Margot Kidder had or even the cynicism and sarcastic sense of humor that Dana Delany brought to Lois in the 90's animated series. I know Lois is supposed to be more than a little bitter because Superman left her life without so much as a goodbye and that she's not too happy about his sudden return, particularly since she's moved on with her life, but that doesn't mean she has to be an empty, soulless  shell of the woman she once was. And that's another thing: I don't buy at all that this is supposed to be the same Lois that Margot Kidder played. Not only does her lack of personality hinder that for me but it's also just the way she looks. She doesn't look at all like Kidder for one thing and for another, Bosworth was twenty-two when she was cast whereas Kidder was almost thirty when she first played the role. If this is supposed to be in continuity with the first two movies, then shouldn't they have hired a woman in her mid-30's to play Lois? I guess they figured that someone like that wouldn't work when paired up with the twenty-six-year old Brandon Routh (they probably should have tried to find someone around that same age to play Superman as well; although, to be fair, Routh was about the same age that Christopher Reeve was when he did the first movie) but hey, it couldn't have been any worse than the chemistry that Bosworth has with Routh, which is none. I don't buy that these two are in love at all. No interaction between the two of them makes me believe that: Lois scolds Superman for leaving her when they meet up again for the first time after he saves her, the two of them take another flight above Metropolis, they almost kiss when they get back but decide not to, and then, Lois suddenly has feelings for him again that really come out when he's seriously injured and possibly dying. I get that you would be concerned for an old love if something like that happened but still, I don't buy at all that that little flight would make Lois have feelings for him again. While I can't say at this point whether I think she's better or worse than Amy Adams in Man of Steel, Kate Bosworth is a contender for the worst Lois Lane imaginable in my opinion.

The character that I was much more interested in than Lois Lane was James Marsden as her fiancé, Richard White. Even though they didn't give Marsden much to do, I do like the way the character was written. They could have easily have turned him into a jealous asshole who tries every way possible to keep Superman from coming back into Lois' life but they didn't. While there is one scene where he presses Lois about just how far things ever went between her and Superman and about how she truly felt about him, he never flies off the handle and yells stuff like, "You're lying!" or, "I better not catch you trying to see him behind my back!" Instead, they make him a likable and respectful guy who truly cares about both Lois and his "son" and puts himself in serious danger when he realizes that they're in trouble. Moreover, when Superman arrives, saves them all from drowning, and tells Richard that he'll help them take off in their seaplane, Richard gives him a sincere, "Thank you." Plus, when Lois tells Richard that they have to go back and help Superman since he's in danger, Richard quickly agrees to do so when he could have easily and selfishly refused, and when Superman is in critical condition in the hospital after getting rid of Lex Luthor's Kryptonite-filled mini continent, Richard drives Lois there so she can see him, telling her that they'll let her do so despite the crowd because of who she is. I always like it when filmmakers decide not to take the route that would have been the most obvious for them to go down. We already have one villain; we didn't need another.

Speaking of which, does Lex Luthor have to be the villain in every single Superman movie? I know he's Superman's most well-known adversary and all but, for God's sake, this is the fourth damn movie in a series of five that's featured him (and for that matter, the character of Ross Webster in Superman III was basically nothing more than a stand-in for Luthor and a lame one at that). It'd be like if after the first Batman, they kept bringing back Jack Nicholson's Joker: you'd get tired of it after a while.  Supes does have other enemies that are about as popular as Luthor, like Brainiac and Bizarro. Give them a chance to shine in a big budget movie! Okay, with that little rant out of the way, let's talk about Kevin Spacey's take on the role that was previously played by Gene Hackman. Now, the first time I saw Superman Returns, I absolutely hated him. I thought he was horribly miscast and brought nothing to the character, making his scenes a chore to get through. Looking back on that first viewing, I think the troubled times I was going through made me unable to really enjoy anything worthwhile about the movie because of how unhappy I was with my life at that time. Upon subsequent viewings, I gradually warmed up to Spacey to the point where I now feel that he's the best part of the cast. Instead of just copying what Hackman did, Spacey decided to make Luthor much more noticeably psychotic. He's still witty, funny, and energetic but there's also an underlying feeling of psychosis within him this time around when he so nonchalantly talks about how he's going to kill billions of innocent people and flies off the handle in a rage a few times. It's like he's amped up those moments of true evil that we saw Hackman display amongst all of his wit and humor in the first movie. In addition, we can also now see just how much Luthor truly despises Superman. In the first film, the reason he gave for wanting to destroy the Man of Steel was because he saw it as the ultimate challenge for someone as brilliant as him. In Superman II, he at first seemed to want revenge on Superman for foiling his ultimate plan, which was his incentive for escaping prison and going to the Fortress of Solitude, but once General Zod came into the picture, he decided to let someone with the same powers as Superman take care of him while he reaped the rewards he would possibly get for helping Zod. Here, Luthor is nothing but bitter about the five years he spent in prison because of Superman and when he learns of his return, he ensures that he won't foil his plan again by making it so that Kryptonite grows within his continent's crust. And when Superman does become weakened when he sets foot on the landmass, Luthor takes great sadistic pleasure out of beating the ever-living crap out of him and ultimately stabbing him with a shard of Kryptonite, causing him to fall over the edge into the ocean, where he will undoubtedly drown. Therefore, you can just imagine the rage that must have filled every fiber of his being when Superman actually did manage to ruin this plan. If they had done another movie, Luthor would have probably nixed any other plans and gone straight to killing Superman in the most painful way imaginable. So, even though I may not have cared for him the first time, I now feel that Spacey, being the great actor that he is, was a really good choice for Luthor and he did it very well.

Unfortunately, one of the many unnecessary callbacks to the first two movies is the presence of Parker Posey as Kitty Kowalski, a female cohort of Luthor's who is nothing more than a stand-in for Mrs. Teschmacher. There are many, many similarities between the two: like Mrs. Teschmacher, Kitty continues to work for Luthor even though she's obviously sickened by his cruelty (I've read that she was supposedly a nurse at the prison where Luthor was held but I don't remember them mentioning that at all); she has an infatuation with Superman; and she ultimately betrays Luthor in the end (in Kitty's case, the latter shows more of what a good person she is than her predecessor in that she ensures that Luthor won't be able to kill any more people, whereas Mrs. Teschmacher simply helped Superman because he promised to save her mother first). While the character isn't annoying or anything (at least, to me) and Posey does play her adequately, I ultimately can't see her as anything other than Bryan Singer's attempt to make his film as much like Richard Donner's as possible.

Replacing Jackie Cooper as Perry White is Frank Langella who, like Kevin Spacey, I initially did not care for when I first watched the film. While I won't say I grew to like him as much as I did Spacey's Luthor, I will say that I do appreciate him a bit more now than I did at first. He's not as entertaining or energetic as Cooper was but I do think he captures the character's desire and constant drive for the Daily Planet to have the best stories very well. He does have some really good lines as well, like when he tells Lois, "Three things sell newspapers: tragedy, sex, and Superman. People are sick of tragedy and we all know that you can't write worth a damn about sex," and, "Lois, Pulitzer Prizes are like Academy Awards: no one remembers what you got one for, just that you got one" (I think Robin Williams would have attested to that). And that bit near the end when they're not sure whether Superman is going to pull through or not after being taken to the hospital and, just to be safe, Perry has prepared two newspaper headlines, one saying SUPERMAN IS DEAD and the other saying SUPERMAN LIVES (the title of the aborted Tim Burton Superman project for those who don't know), is just brilliant. It's another example of why you just can't help but love Perry for the irascible old guy that he is. My initial misgivings aside, I do think Langella did a good job as the character.

Even though he has nothing to do, I think Sam Huntington did fit the role of Jimmy Olsen. While I couldn't see Marc McClure's Jimmy getting so mad when Clark accidentally bumps his camera when we first see him, I feel that Huntington was appropriately energetic as the character. He may not be the "golly, gee-whiz" type that McClure was and I also don't remember Jimmy in the other movies liking Clark Kent this much (I know they were friends but my God, Huntington's Jimmy is basically drooling all over him when he shows back up at the Daily Planet) but I do think what he does in the little bit of screentime that he had works. Another returning character is Superman's adopted mother, Martha Kent (Eva Marie Saint), who, despite having only a few scenes, is just as warm, loving, and encouraging of a character as she was in the original film. In addition, while it may simply be footage of him from the first movie, we do have the "return" of Marlon Brando as Jor-El. I have to admit that, as much as I feel the use of his dialogue here gets a bit excessive and is a part of one of the film's problems, I'd be lying if I said that I didn't like hearing Brando saying those awesome, almost poetic lines from the original movie again, including some that were only present in the special edition of that film. And for fans of the George Reeves TV show, we have cameos by Jack Larson as a bartender and Noel Neill as the elderly widow whom Lex Luthor married in order to receive her fortune.

One last character that I'm going to mention is significant not because of his performance but because he's the heart of one of the many continuity issues that Superman Returns has with Superman II, the film it's meant to be a direct sequel to, and that character is Jason White (Tristan Lake Leabu), the young son of Lois Lane whose father, big shock, is revealed to be Superman. I have nothing against the kid himself. Despite his age and the fact that he had nothing that substantial to do, I don't think he did a bad job. He was cute, he wasn't annoying, and I do like some of his scenes, like near the end where he and Lois visit Superman in the hospital and Jason says that he hopes Supes gets better, saying, "I like him," and especially the part afterward where Superman visits his son at his home while he's sleeping and he says to him the same words that Jor-El said to him before sending him away in the spacepod. In fact, this kid is the one thing that would have made me curious to see a sequel to this because I would have wondered how both he and Richard would react to the news that he's Superman's son and how the relationship with his true father would have developed. But, that said, the problem comes with trying to piece together the events that led to him being born. You'd think it wouldn't be a problem since the answer is obviously when Superman and Lois slept together in Superman II. Fair enough, but there's a hiccup there: which version of Superman II does this movie follow? You'd think it'd be the theatrical version but, if you remember, Superman and Lois got together in that version only after Supes drained himself of his superpowers; ergo, Jason should just be a normal kid and not have any superpowers. I realize that since we're talking about comic book movies, you could make up some reason as to why he would have powers, bringing up how Superman was eventually able to reclaim his in that movie and so on, but for the sake of this argument, let's keep it simple, shall we? Anyway, since that can't be the case, you would think, "Well, maybe this follows the Richard Donner version." It would make more sense given how in that version, Superman and Lois did indeed get together before he became a normal man, and also because the Richard Donner version was being planned and put together at around the same time this film was being produced and we know how much Bryan Singer respects Donner's original film. So, problem solved, right? Nope. Remember how the Donner cut ends? Superman turns the world back, negating the events of the entire film, including when he revealed his true identity to Lois and their relationship developed from there. I know that was the intended ending of the sequel from the get-go and it was instead chosen to be the ending of the first film but they did use it in the actual version of the sequel that was assembled, once again adding to the idea that it's mainly an approximation of what Donner's version of Superman II would have been had he not been fired. Now, I'm not blaming Singer, since he couldn't have known this while writing the screenplay and by the time he became aware of it, it was obviously too late to do anything about it, but it makes it a real hassle to figure out where Superman Returns fits in. In hindsight, I don't think they should have gone with this idea at all. They should have scrapped it and it would have saved fans a lot of headaches. Now, I'm probably going to get schooled by someone who knows a lot more about this stuff than I do and maybe I am incorrect somewhere in here but, looking at both versions of Superman II, Jason being Superman's son in this movie doesn't make any sense to me.

While we're on the subject, let's talk about some other reasons why this movie doesn't match up with being a sequel to Superman II. One comes from the very core of the story, that Superman has been gone for five years and nobody knows where he went or why he left. This actually makes me hope that this is a sequel to the Richard Donner version because if it does indeed follow the theatrical one, then there's a glaring bit of a continuity problem as far as Superman himself is concerned. Remember what he said to the president at the very end of that version? "Sorry I've been away so long. I won't let you down again." Those were his exact words and therefore, if we're led to believe that the Superman we're seeing here is the same one, then I think we can use the old adage of there being a first time for everything and that Superman told an outright lie. That sucks because it does some damage to the characterization that Christopher Reeve strove to bring to life in those films. His Superman was one whose words you believed without question because he came across as such a great, honest man. This craps all over it and what's more, it comes across like Supes didn't learn a damn thing from when he gave up his powers in Superman II and quickly realized that his responsibility to the people of Earth is more important than his personal happiness. That's why I would hope that this movie follows the Richard Donner version. True, it would still come across like he didn't learn anything, particularly since we're now talking about those awesome scenes he had with the spirit of his father, but at the very least, it wouldn't have felt like he lied. And besides, if he was going to be gone for some time, wouldn't he have at least held a press conference or something? Granted, I still don't like the idea of him just abandoning the Earth for five years but I might have been able to accept it more if he had actually told everyone that there was something he had to do and he wasn't sure how long he would be away. At least then, Lois wouldn't have been so angry with him.

Here's another thing: did Bryan Singer forget when the first two movies were made? The time period that those movies actually take place in isn't specified, granted, but given some of the clothes, hairstyles, and other such stuff , it's obvious that they are taking place around the time they were produced (that pimp in the first movie who compliments Supes on his outfit when he makes his first appearance should say it all). Now, with that in mind, if this is meant to take place after Superman II, ignoring the events of III and IV completely, and Superman has been gone for five years since that movie, then why is it now suddenly 2006? I know that modern day audiences aren't so eager to accept a movie that takes place at any time other than present day but it'd be really weird and jarring to watch the first two movies that take place in the late 70's, early 80's and then go to straight to this movie that's clearly set in 2006. Is Metropolis just that advanced of a city and so far ahead of everybody else that they got cellphones, modern computers, and so on by 1985? If their engineers had been working for the country at large, God knows where we'd be at by this point when it comes to technology!

I know it seems like I'm being overly harsh on Bryan Singer and I don't mean to be but these issues really stick out to me every time I watch the film and it all leads to my ultimate opinion on this film's very conception: this shouldn't have been as a sequel to Superman II. When they finally got the opportunity to make another Superman movie, they should have just rebooted the series completely and not tried to fix the downward spiral that it followed after the second movie. Not only did this story cause major continuity problems but it also led to the rather sacrilegious notion of them hiring an actor who looked like and was meant to be nothing more than a physical replacement for Christopher Reeve. To me, once Reeve had his tragic accident and was paralyzed for the rest of his life, they shouldn't have tried to make any more movies within this continuity. This should have just been the start of a brand new series, with Brandon Routh or whoever else they could have chosen giving his own interpretation of the character because nobody else will ever be able to play Superman the way Reeve did. They could have even kept this exact same story, minus  all the ties to the first two movies, or just come up with another that begins with Superman's character  already established, much like what Tim Burton did with Batman. We all know the origin of Superman. We don't need to see it again (something that Zack Snyder should have understood but that's neither here nor there). I'm not saying that it would have done better at the box-office or gone over better with audiences and critics if this was the case but I do think it wouldn't be as unpopular of a movie as it is. But, unfortunately, this movie now stands as the final entry in the series that begin with that first magnificent film in 1978 and while it's certainly a better way to go out than Superman IV, I still think a respectable reboot could have been done instead.

I do mean it when I say that they could have used this same story for a reboot but they would have had to re-work it and iron some things out because, even if you take out the continuity errors with Superman II, the story of Superman Returns is still very flawed and the biggest flaw I can think of is how Bryan Singer carries out the concept that he intended to explore with it. Since Superman had been out of the mainstream public consciousness for almost two decades, Singer decided that it would be interesting to write a story where Superman has to find his place in a world that's moved on and has basically forgotten him. That is a good idea for a superhero movie but the thing is, Singer doesn't run with it as much as he could have because it seems as though the world hasn't moved on from Superman or forgotten him at all. He's welcomed back with open arms by the world at large the minute he saves the plane at the beginning of the movie. He doesn't have to find his place in the modern world; he just immediately settles back into his position as Earth's defender and everybody, with the exception of Lois, just says, "Yay, he's back!" Kind of makes Lois' Pulitzer Prize-winning article Why the World Doesn't Need Superman a little redundant, don't you think? If they wanted to show Superman trying to find his place again in a world that he hasn't been part of for a long time, they should have had everybody at first be surprised of his return and then get angry about him having left them for five years with no explanation. That way, he would have to earn back the trust of the people of Earth and as a result, the ending where he nearly kills himself to save the world from Luthor's man-made continents would have had much more of an impact. They could have then followed that up with the people realizing, "My God, he put his life on the line to save us, he's probably going to die now as a result, and we've been nothing but assholes to him ever since he came back." Not only would that have explored the core idea of this movie in a more satisfying way but it would be more logical for people in the modern day to react that way. Everybody just welcoming Superman back after he had basically abandoned them for half a decade feels very old fashioned and trite, not at all how a modern, post-9/11 populace would react. As I've said before, I totally understand Singer's admiration for the original movie but the thing is, the mid-2000's was a completely different time from the late 70's and a movie made in that style simply didn't work then and it doesn't work now either.

Clark: I need to surreptitiously tell her why I left without saying goodbye
Lois: Where the hell is a damn taxi when you need one?!

The most challenging personal dilemma that Superman has in this movie is getting himself back into Lois' life because she's the one who's moved on, not the entire world. Truth be told, this concept doesn't really work for me either because the  emotion they're trying to make you feel is sympathy for Superman because Lois, the love of his life, has a whole new life and wants nothing to do with him. But really, why should you feel sorry for someone who left a woman that truly loved him without any explanation, was gone for five years while she didn't know where he was or whether he was alive or dead, and then comes back and has a hard time accepting that she hasn't been sitting around, waiting for him? Superman or not, that's a really thoughtless thing to do to the person you supposedly love more than anyone else and even after they meet up again, he still doesn't give her that concrete of a reason as to why he didn't tell her he was leaving. I know he stammered one out as Clark but that wouldn't mean anything to her since she doesn't know that he's Superman (not to mention that she wasn't even really listening to him) and when they take that little flight over Metropolis, all he does is tell her that he can hear people all over the world crying for a savior (that is a good dramatic idea, though) and he says, "I'm sorry I left you, Lois." I was half-expecting her to say, "Sorry's not going to cut it," because it doesn't. As much as I don't like Kate Bosworth's performance, I can't blame Lois for being so upset with Superman and his following her to her home like a stalker and eavesdropping on a conversation between her and Richard with his super-hearing doesn't help me sympathize with him either. It's this kind of stuff that makes Superman Returns a rather frustrating movie instead of an out and out horrible one because I can see a lot of good ideas in here but they're not executed well.

The story issues aside, another reason why this isn't a film that I go back to that often is because it's simply not a very enjoyable viewing experience. For one thing, it's 154 minutes long and while there are some good action scenes, they're very few and far between, with most of the movie being made up of dialogue scenes where the characters talk about the dilemmas that are going on in the film. True, the original Superman was a very long movie that didn't have wall-to-wall action either but I can get into that film much more easily because it's an engrossing story and the actors brought their roles to life in very likable, entertaining ways. Here, the main characters are so bland and do so much talking about how much their present situations suck, especially with Superman's constant moping about how Lois wants nothing to do with him, that it's hard for me to get invested. And the third act where Luthor begins creating his man-made continent goes on for what feels like an eternity. In the first movie, the movie began a brisk pace towards the finale when Luthor fired those two missiles he hijacked; here, the movie drags on for another hour when he puts his plan into action. I'm no filmmaker but I'm sure that extending the last part of your movie for that long when you should be getting your audience pumped and excited for the climax is not how you do things. And as I hinted at up above, the tone of the movie doesn't help either. Bryan Singer may have had good intentions for coming up with this story but it's completely devoid of the sense of wonder and fun that I feel that Superman should have and is indeed what the original movies did. You can be serious with Superman, yes, but the sad, melancholy tone of this film does not make it an enjoyable watch at all and adds even more to the fatigue that I feel every time that third act begins. I wasn't really enjoying myself before then, so why should I start now? I'm sure that some will undoubtedly disagree with me because they enjoy the story and tone of this movie but it doesn't do it for me.

Now, I will start talking more about some things that I actually like since by now you're probably wondering why I didn't put this as another installment of Movies That Suck. My reason for that is because Bryan Singer is no slouch in the visual department and as a result, this movie is well made on a technical level. Its very look is well done. They used plenty of warm colors, with a lot of orange and a little bit of red, and the film is very pleasing to the eye as a result... for the most part. Once Luthor's plan goes into motion, the film stock becomes very gray and drab looking and while I understand the reason for that since this is supposed to be the darkest hour with all of havoc the continent is wreaking on the atmosphere and whatnot, it's just one more thing that causes me to yawn and sink down in my seat during that last section of the movie. That said, though, I'm so glad they didn't go the Man of Steel route and bleach bypass the movie so much that there's no joy to be found in it in any capacity. If nothing else, at least this movie looks like a Superman movie.

The film's production design is top notch as well. It had a budget of over $200 million and it shows. The sets and locations all look fantastic. The little section that we get at the old Kent farm looks really good and I admire the fact that they had that place built and grew all the crops that you see as well. I can't fault Singer for trying his hardest to make this movie work in every single aspect. Metropolis looks great and you'd swear that it was a real city and
both the interior and exteriors of the Daily Planet are impeccable. The classic globe atop the building is great and the inside looks like a real business office. The sets for the mansion and yacht that Luthor inherits from the old widow look good, particularly the latter with its enormous living area down below that has a spiral staircase, a pool table, a piano, and plenty of books, and what else can I say about the Fortress of Solitude and the continent that Luthor creates that hasn't already been said? They're amazing. The

fortress looks much more vast and imposing than it did in the original films, as well as perhaps a little more... cold. While the design is great, I'm not exactly sure why Superman would want to spend a lot of time there, despite the presence of his father's spirit (the movie itself probably answers my own question since there's only one instance where he goes there). And while Luthor's continent is another very impressive set, it does make Luthor look truly insane when he thinks that people will pay through the nose to live on such a barren, unpleasant-looking landmass that appears to have the worst weather conditions that one could hope to deal with. Yeah, people will definitely be fighting each other to try to live there. In all seriousness, though, this movie's production is amazing and, as every big budget movie should look, every dollar is up on the screen.

You have to really squint to see his heat vision

The effects in the movie are also well done. There's a lot of CGI and some of it is a bit dated (the completely computer-generated Superman that you see in close-up at the end of the movie is hardly convincing) but the majority of it does its job well. Actually, I think the best effects here are stuff like when you see the skyline of Metropolis (I'm sure there's a combination of CG and miniatures there) or the visuals of the Earth with Superman hovering above it in outer space. That is just breathtaking. I also like the image of Superman rising up into the sky in order to energize himself with the sun's rays after he's been saved and Lois has removed the shard of Kryptonite from his side. Again, that is awesome and would actually make for a great painting! Another thing that I appreciate is that they were quite subtle when creating the effects for Superman's powers. Of course, with the advent of computers, Superman can fly with more power than was ever possible before but they also decided to use some good old-fashioned harness and wire-work for when he's floating or flies off very gently. As it did with Christopher Reeve, it gives him a feeling of grace when he very gently flies off instead of just shooting around like a rocket all the time. And instead of making his eye-lasers over the top and flashy, they're very understated and surprisingly easy to miss as well, even when the camera is on a close-up of his face. The same goes for his super-breath and his X-Ray vision. I really like the effect of the latter power, in that it simply looks as if what ever he's looking at turns transparent when he uses it. The moment where he uses it on Lois to make sure she has no internal injuries after saving her from Luthor's sinking yacht looks very cool to me. The effects that you see when Luthor's continent is rising from the sea, when that criminal fires a mounted mini-gun at Superman, and when Supes carries the continent up into space are clearly CGI but it is pretty good CGI and serves its purpose. And finally, I really like the opening credits sequence. Not only does it have a nice recreation of the original film's actual credits but the camera zooming around the universe combined with the credits coming at the screen is very energetic and exciting. (I've heard some say that it looks the opening to 3rd Rock from the Sun but I just think that's being really petty and nitpicky myself.) It's just a shame that a huge chunk of the actual movie doesn't have that amount of stuff happening.

Even though there isn't a lot of action in the movie, the action scenes that are present are well done. The most impressive by far is the first one, where Superman saves the airplane that Lois is aboard when the shuttle that's attached to its back malfunctions and threatens to travel off into space with it. Even people who absolutely despise this movie seem to agree that this sequence is great. It's very well filmed and choreographed, showing us the chaos that happens inside the plane when the crisis first begins and then showing Superman doing what he does best by detaching the shuttle from the plane and then slowing the plane's descent. We also get a feeling that this isn't as easy for Superman as you would think, particularly when we see one of the plane's wings break and Supes has to quickly shoot downwards to catch back up to the plane, where he gets on its nose and slows it to where he's able to set it down gently in the middle of a baseball field. Really, really good stuff and it's a shame that the movie doesn't give us more action like that. The next action scene takes place quite a while after that and is technically a two-parter. First, we have that moment where this criminal gets his hands on a mounted mini-gun and is about to fire on some cops when Superman swoops in at the last minute and shields them from the bullets. The effect with the slow-motion bullets is a bit lame and it's hard not to think of The Matrix (that bullet-time gimmick had gotten stale long before this film) but that does lead up to the somewhat iconic moment where the guy pulls out a gun and fires it right at Superman's eye, which it bounces off of. That's quite cool and I like the smirk that Supes gives the guy after that happens. And then, we have the moment where Kitty is acting like she's in an out of control car in order to distract Superman while Luthor steals the Kryptonite from the museum. However, Kitty discovers that Luthor cut the car's brake line to ensure that it would go as well as it could and she's actually saved by Superman when he grabs her car, lifts it up into the air, and sets her down safely after she caused a lot of chaos throughout Metropolis. Standard stuff but in a movie as slow as this, you really have to count your blessings. And at the beginning of the movie's last act, we get a sequence where the earth tremors caused by Luthor's rapidly growing continent cause some mayhem in Metropolis, with an explosion blowing through a sewer that Superman has to extinguish with his super-breath and the moment when he has to stop the Daily Planet's globe from crushing a lot of people. This is the last major action sequence in the film. While there are some other instances of Superman doing stuff afterward, this is the last action setpiece that's of any major length.

The last act of the movie would have been much more satisfying if everything were building to an exciting climax where Superman has to race to stop Luthor's plan but it doesn't work out that way. As I've said, this last section of the movie drags like nobody's business and what we get instead are some sporadic scenes of Superman doing stuff scattered throughout it. First, not too long after we get a nicely done moment aboard Luthor's yacht where one of his henchmen attacks
Lois and Jason reveals himself to be Superman's son, he saves the two of them, along with Richard, from drowning in the sinking yacht and helps them take off. Nothing noteworthy there. Then we have the scene where Superman lands on Luthor's continent and, having been weakened by the Kryptonite, is beaten within an inch of his life by Luthor and his thugs. It's actually a pretty brutal scene and it is humbling to see Superman screaming in
pain as they beat him to a pulp, shove his head in a puddle, and then Luthor delivers the coup de grace by stabbing him with a shard of Kryptonite and breaking it off in him before he falls off the side of the landmass into the water. (I have to nitpick, though, I don't like it when you can hear Superman in a muffled voice, "I'm still Superman!" Given how humble Christopher Reeve played him, that doesn't feel like something he would say.) That's when Lois and Richard fly in and save him, with Lois removing the shard from his side. Superman, knowing that he must stop Luthor even though it could potentially mean his death, flies up into the sky to energize himself with the sun's rays and then swoops down with all his might and uses his heat vision to burn his way into the continent. Not too long afterward, Luthor and his gang feel the continent starting to shake and Luthor, realizing what it has to be, tells everyone to head for the chopper. This is another nice enough sequence, with lots of falling debris and Luthor's two henchmen getting crushed by a falling pillar, and it leads up to another great image of Superman using every bit of his strength to push the continent up into outer space (the version of the Superman theme that you hear makes this even more awesome). After doing so, he falls back to Earth due to his weakened state and lands with an audible thud. The problem though is that, despite how good this and all these scenes are, the snail's pace of this final act robs them of much of the power they could have had because by this point, you're more than likely bored and wish that the movie would just end, as I felt the first time I watched it. And plus, I still think they should have had it be a gradual struggle for Superman to triumph instead of just having him get injured, energize himself back up, and then succeed.

The music score from this film is one that I do enjoy. Granted, a lot of it is just John Ottman redoing John Williams' original themes (which sound really, really good, I might add) but Ottman did manage to come up with some music of his own that I do like. Some of them are very quiet, whimsical themes, like the stuff that you hear during Superman and Lois' flight above Metropolis (which includes a nice reworking of the love theme from the other movies) and when Superman is leaving Lois' house after visiting Jason at the end of the movie, and others are very big, orchestral pieces like when Superman is lifting the continent up into the sky as well as that great piece that's full of vocalizing voices when he's flying above the city at the end after leaving Lois' house, but all of them are very good and help to give something of a soul, even if the actual movie is rather lacking in that regard. 

At the end of the day, Superman Returns is a very mixed bag. On the good side, the film is well shot, the acting is good for the most part, there are some great visuals, the production values are high, the action scenes look good and are executed very well, and the music isn't too bad. Unfortunately, the film is way too damn long and slow, with the final hour dragging horribly, it doesn't synch up well with the first two films in many ways and flies in the face of what occurred in those films in others, and, ultimately, I think it proved that after Christopher Reeve was no longer able to physically play Superman, they shouldn't have continued with this continuity. Brandon Routh wasn't a horrible stand-in for Reeve but the very idea that he was hired simply because he looked so much like him is a smidge distasteful for me, particularly when you realize that Reeve had died by the time this movie was put into production. They should have just rebooted it here, as they eventually did do with Man of Steel, kept everything else including the story (with some retouching, mind you) and the cast and I think they would have been fine. But, history is history, and we'll have to accept Superman Returns as a rather lackluster ending to a series that began with an awesome movie that starred a really great actor who absolutely embodied the legendary character that he played.